In recent years, the role and identity of British cinema has been changing, and it is these changes with which British Cinema in the 1980s is concerned. It looks at the increasing domination of the world film industry by Hollywood and the response of British filmmaking to this, the role of government, and the increasingly close relationship between film and television. It also examines the kinds of images British cinema produced in this period and how they relate to a shifting sense of `British' identity. The book not only looks at the appeal of images of the past in the heritage film (such as Howards End) and `films of Empire' (such as A Passage to India) but also discusses the more questioning images of the present by the `state of the nation' film such as Letter to Brezhnev and My Beautiful Laundrette. In doing so, it explores how these films deal with issues of class, gender and ethnicity and how these in turn connect to our understanding of the `Britishness' of British cinema. British Cinema in the 1980s will become the definitive study of an important period of British filmmaking. Bringing together a discussion of British society, the British film industry and British films, John Hill provides an accessible analysis of the main themes and issues characterizing British cinema of the time.

'John Hill's authoritative study is ... extremely welcome, and certain to establish itself rapidly as the standard version of British filmmaking in this decade. ... (It is distinguished by) a generally lucide prose style, informed by theory but not jargon-ridden; firm principles of organisation; the judicious weighing of evidence and competing views; and the ability to combine close analysis of selected films while relating them to broader patterns of political, social and cultural life.' Journal of Popular British Cinema
An excellent and penetrating analysis of an emergent decade. * Adam Jones, University College Warrington. *

John Hill is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Media and Performance Studies at the University of Ulster at Coleraine, is a Governor of the British Film Institute, and is co-editor of The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (OUP, 1998)